So for the past 2 years now, I’ve been a lazy fuck and my weight went up to about 245lbs. I’m 41. 6’ tall.

Back in July, I met and banged a cute 25 year old single mom who unknowingly lit a fire under my ass to make some drastic life changes.

So technically my starting weight was 247lbs around July 20. I moved at the end of July which took a lot of effort. Also, just on meeting this girl, I immediately made the call to stop overeating. So between no more overeating and moving, I dropped 15-20lbs in a few weeks. As expected, when the move was finished, the weight loss stopped. I have over eaten maybe twice since all of this started.

So clearly, physical activity is necessary. I joined the gym. Something I’ve done before and never had much luck with. This time I did something different. I hired a personal trainer. This gym is pretty cool and the first thing they did was get me hooked up with a guy my age. First consultation included all the shit where they tell you your BMI, body fat percentage, resting metabolic age, etc. Needless to say The news was shitty.

We discussed what my goals were. I told him we’ll keep it simple. I dropped 20lbs in a few weeks. I want to be at 200 by the end of September, and 180 by the end of October. I’m not so worried about BMI, or body fat percentages. Those will both plummet along with the weight.

I meet with him on mondays and Fridays. Been doing this for a couple of weeks now. I also go in and workout on Wednesday’s and Saturday’s and either on Tuesday or Thursday. We do high intensity interval training. It’s sort of similar to CrossFit, but without the risk of injury.

One critical thing I told the trainer last week was “do not be afraid to push me to the point of pissing me off.”

I’ve worked outside in commercial concrete construction. I’ve weighed 220 and had a 34/35” waist. I’ve seen firsthand the impact it has on women. When a woman tells you she was watching a lion documentary on nat geo and all she could think of is you, you’re doing it right. But the price you pay comes when you stop working in those conditions and yet you’re still eating 5000 calories/day. That muscle immediately goes away, and you get fat and lose your energy.

At my age, I’ll forego the bulk and continue to build the habit of not overeating. I’ll still build plenty of strength and muscle, but I’ll be in a lighter, leaner package.

So at this point I’m in week 3. I’ve got 2 issues that I’ve got to rectify ASAP.
1. I smoke. That shit has to go. Smoking is bad for all the reasons they’ve talked about for 30+ years. What they don’t talk about imo is that nicotine is vasoconstrictor. It narrows blood vessels. This is why smoking causes heart disease and ED in men. The tar and shit in cigarette smoke limits the amount of oxygen that gets into your bloodstream. The nicotine narrows the bloodstream so the diminished oxygen can’t resupply the muscles in a timely fashion.
2. I’ve been hitting this workout hard. Yet my weight is barely going down. I’ve already made the switch to a ketogenic diet. Some people complain about them for their lack of variety. When you’re battling excess weight, the lack of variety is good imo. It changes the way you look at food. Food becomes just fuel.

The difference about doing this at 41 versus 25 or 30 is that at 41 you know what the stakes are. Your body isn’t quite as quick to react, and off the bat a 25 year old is stronger. But the mental discipline to push through discomfort is light years beyond the majority of 25 year olds.

The one area where I’m still lacking is accountability. That’s part of why I hired the trainer, and also why I’m posting this here. Because sometimes you don’t give a fuck about letting yourself down, but you don’t want to let others down.

Most of my updates will focus on weight losses, and overall feeling during and after my training sessions. Once a month or so I’ll post current body fat percentages, BMI, metabolic age, etc.

The first three workout sessions I left feeling tired and nauseous. On the fourth I ate immediately after the workout which stopped the nausea. I was a bit tired but not too bad. Today we really pushed it, and I almost fainted at one point. Ate when I got home, feel a bit off, but my body is on the verge of entering ketosis so that’s to be expected. I also came home 3lbs lighter than when I left.

Today’s weight: 223
General feeling: kind of funky, but entering ketosis does that.

In regards to the nausea and fainting, try supplementing with salt before your workouts. A few grams, about 1/2 tsp is good. It's doubly important on a keto diet. You should notice a benefit immediately in your workout capacity.

"For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” - Romans 8:18

Today's weight: 216/217 Today I measured it on the doctor's office scale at the gym.

My trainer had to cancel on Friday due to his daughter having some health issues. I do HIIT with the trainer on mondays and Fridays. So I missed Friday's training session. I still did mild weight lifting and cardio.

So if people are wondering how I've lost 6lbs in one week I'll tell you. Most diets and weight loss programs are sold on the notion of being new and EASY. That works for some people. The majority of people who have a significant amount of weight to lose (in excess of 40lbs) will find dieting and weight loss challenging or downright difficult. The first thing I needed was a serious wake up call. I got two of them back to back. The first one was when I was sitting in the drive thru at wendy's and looking at the calorie content of various value meals. Do you realize that a large baconator meal is around 1800-2000 calories? That got me paying attention to caloric intake. I mentioned the 25 year old I was banging already.

If you're 40-50lbs overweight, the first thing you've got to do is accept the fact that you're not like this because of bad genes, low metabolism, or even poor diet. You're like this because you eat to damn much. You can do low carb, but if you're still consuming 4000 calories daily while sitting on your ass, guess what? You ain't gonna lose any weight. You have to make the conscious decision to reduce your caloric intake, or increase your activity to a point where calories burned exceed those consumed. That's how weight loss works. Burn more than you consume. Really fucking simple.

Why go low carb? Because when you restrict your food intake, a lot of people report feeling like shit. That's because they're constantly dealing with low sugar spells. Another thing. When you drink that 20oz regular coke, your body has to deal with all of that sugar before you go back to burning fat. I do low carb because it stops the low sugar spells. My body is now in 24/7 fat burning mode because I've deprived it of sugar/carbs.

I also pay attention to caloric intake/overall quantity of food consumed. It's much easier just to focus on overall quantity and weight of what you've eaten. 90% of my diet is now meat. I buy the pre sliced and prepacked deli meat from the grocery store. Each pack is 2ozs. I eat 1 or 2 packs for breakfast. Go to the gym. Eat one more after the gym. Then I have dinner which consists of meat of some sort plus a small salad. So I consume about 1-1.5lbs of food daily. I don't feel weak. I don't feel bad. I do feel hungry from time to time, but even that's not too hard to cope with. And learning to cope with a feeling of hunger is a way to build some discipline.

I needed a break from the diet to cheat a bit. Wasn't worth it. I don't feel guilty. Just don't feel it was worth it. Physically I feel like crap with all the excess fluid I'm sucking up now that I'm out of ketosis. Will resume again tomorrow.

A few things have changed since the last update. I stopped taking my bp medication. It contained HCTZ (diuretic) and I wasn't sure if it was having an impact on my weight loss so I stopped it. Since I was no longer taking HCTZ, last week my weight crept up a bit to 219. I expected that. But I held fast with the diet even though I didn't make it to the gym as much as I wanted. I've got a water rower at home so I worked out on that, did leg lifts, etc. Got back to the trainer this morning and weighed in after my workout. 215 today. I'm going to get really aggressive this week and heavily restrict caloric intake. I had wanted to drop under 200 by the end of September. That probably won't happen. I'm gonna shoot for 210 or less by the end of the month.

Haven’t updated in a while. A week ago, I got a kidney stone. That was my fault. I did 3 days of semi fasting and keeping calories under 1000. Here’s where I screwed up. I wound up letting myself get dehydrated severely. That along with high protein resulted in a uric acid kidney stone which I think has finally passed. Throughout this, my BP was sky high at 180/120. This is way too dangerous. So I went back on the BP pill.

I started a thread in life that discusses my experience with the stone. But I’ll summarize it here. For something that isn’t life threatening kidney stones are no joke. The pain is real. The stress, discomfort, and everything else is real. So diet and weight loss went on the back burner. My last really intense bout of pain happened on Tuesday night. So last night I got back into some cardio at home. This after I took a huge dump (which I hadn’t passed anything in almost a week) I decided to step on the scale. I was expecting to be back up to 220 or so. I’m at 212. Tomorrow I’ll resume with the trainer.

(10-04-2018 12:19 PM)porscheguy Wrote: Haven’t updated in a while. A week ago, I got a kidney stone. That was my fault. I did 3 days of semi fasting and keeping calories under 1000. Here’s where I screwed up. I wound up letting myself get dehydrated severely. That along with high protein resulted in a uric acid kidney stone which I think has finally passed. Throughout this, my BP was sky high at 180/120. This is way too dangerous. So I went back on the BP pill.

I started a thread in life that discusses my experience with the stone. But I’ll summarize it here. For something that isn’t life threatening kidney stones are no joke. The pain is real. The stress, discomfort, and everything else is real. So diet and weight loss went on the back burner. My last really intense bout of pain happened on Tuesday night. So last night I got back into some cardio at home. This after I took a huge dump (which I hadn’t passed anything in almost a week) I decided to step on the scale. I was expecting to be back up to 220 or so. I’m at 212. Tomorrow I’ll resume with the trainer.

What BP medicine are you taking?

And the kidney stone was forming for a while, I don't know if you being dehydrated for a few days caused it. I heard that passing a kidney stone is like being in hell.

So I’ve finally got an update to post. The gym I use has one of those high tech (I refer to it as the magic scale) that tells your weight, BMI, resting metabolic age, percentage of body fat, etc. I used it when I first started working out in August.

So my starting weight was 225 with this scale. BMI was 30.5. Percentage of body fat was 36. Resting metabolic age was 90.

Today I was 210. BMI is 28. I’m at 30% body fat. Resting metabolic age is now 70.

I’ve lost 17lbs of fat and gained 2lbs of muscle according to the magic scale.

I’m not sure how accurate the scale is. But if it’s at least reliable, if it can provide consistent results repeatedly, then that’s more important.

I knew where the weight would be. I was a bit disappointed in the body fat percentage, but I think I’m getting hung up on numbers. Resting metabolic age is anyone’s guess. I had hoped to see more gains of muscle weight, but again, it’s nunbers.

I’ve been pretty slack and struggling to focus on weight loss since my kidney stone. I’ve been trying to bend the diet rules too much. But at this stage of the game, in terms of weight, im only at the halfway mark. Body fat percentage will drop faster as I lose more fat.

At this point, my target weight is 190-195. I’d like to see 18-20% body fat. If I can go lower, great.

The big thing now is to dig in my heels and focus on the diet and weight loss. Focus on eating leaner cuts of meat, and keep my activity high and my calories as low as I can tolerate.

I haven't updated lately because my motivation has been lacking since my kidney stone. In addition, I've been juggling too many girls and letting them distract me. I put a stop to that this week. I'm looking into a job that requires a physical assessment including push ups, sit ups, and running. So I decided to change up the routine. I decided to back off the heavy lifting this week, and go cardio intensive. Mostly on the treadmill alternating between brisk walking and running. My stamina still isn't great, and I've never been a runner. This change to my routine has been quite drastic and has resulted in me dropping 6lbs from Monday morning through yesterday.

(09-09-2018 03:06 PM)porscheguy Wrote: Why go low carb? Because when you restrict your food intake, a lot of people report feeling like shit. That's because they're constantly dealing with low sugar spells. Another thing. When you drink that 20oz regular coke, your body has to deal with all of that sugar before you go back to burning fat. I do low carb because it stops the low sugar spells. My body is now in 24/7 fat burning mode because I've deprived it of sugar/carbs.

I also pay attention to caloric intake/overall quantity of food consumed. It's much easier just to focus on overall quantity and weight of what you've eaten. 90% of my diet is now meat. I buy the pre sliced and prepacked deli meat from the grocery store. Each pack is 2ozs. I eat 1 or 2 packs for breakfast. Go to the gym. Eat one more after the gym. Then I have dinner which consists of meat of some sort plus a small salad. So I consume about 1-1.5lbs of food daily. I don't feel weak. I don't feel bad. I do feel hungry from time to time, but even that's not too hard to cope with. And learning to cope with a feeling of hunger is a way to build some discipline.

A couple questions for you porscheguy if that's ok.

I tend to find myself either restricting my calories too much when trying to do low carb or keto. Otherwise, I find myself getting lazy when I try and cook too many of my meals.

How many calories do you probably consume daily?
Do you worry about sodium when you eat all those sandwich meats?

I don’t give a lot of thought to the salt content. Yes it’s probably high, but for my primary meals I think I use less.

As for precooking, I don’t really do that. I prefer to focus on eating things which require minimal cooking times. Steaks and pork chops can be cooked in under 20 minutes.

You don’t have to worry about restricting calories. Remember, if you’re doing keto to shed body fat, every pound of fat on your body is 3500 calories or so. And the reason to do keto is so your body can switch with minimal effort between using what you’ve just eaten to using what you’ve got sitting in storage.